Council plans to build road over “signature hole”

A municipal golf course in Hertfordshire is set to be reconfigured so that 1,250 new homes can be built.

It would also mean that a road would be built over one of the holes – where it is claimed a member’s ashes are buried.

The scheme, which includes the reconfiguration of Cheshunt Park Golf Course and removal of a lake, has been described as “environmental vandalism”.

A spokesperson for Broxbourne Borough Council said there would be “improved landscaping and biodiversity”.=

The council owns the course and it is run by its Be.Broxbourne leisure management firm.

As part of the scheme, developers said they needed to tear up the second hold of the 18-hole course, which is a par four with a lake, where the ashes of one of the original club members are believed to be buried.

Local resident Nick Baker said it is the ‘signature hole’ and the club could ‘fail’ as a golf course as a result.

Cheshunt Park Golf Course. Image from Facebook

“Apart from one of the original members of the golf club’s ashes being buried in that lake, which is very sentimental, it’s a signature hole because you actually have to carry the ball over the lake,” he said.

“I speak to club members and it’s the favourite hole, without a shadow of a doubt.”

Another objector, Eileen Lockwood, feared disruption to wildlife and the surrounding ecology.

“No-one is in favour of environmental vandalism,” she said.

James Podesta, speaking on behalf of the applicant, which is the council, said: “This application commits to maintaining an 18-hole golf course in perpetuity, including through the construction period.

“The course will be improved and enhanced in respect of the playability”

The plan also includes a new practice area and buggy storage near the existing clubhouse.

New ponds were also proposed at the existing third, fifth and eighth holes, with additional ponds created for great crested newts.

A spokesperson for Broxbourne Borough Council said: “The council is not formally aware of ashes having been spread in Cheshunt Park Golf Course.”